#InternetOfThings NY #21 Smart #HomeSecurity / Security of #SmartHome

Posted on July 24th, 2015

The meetup had two speakers and three presentations by IoT hackathon award winners

In the first presentation Andrey Katsman @Canary (a home security system) spoke about the differences between most programming and software development for IoT. The three main differences he highlighted were

specific to hardware

better performance

greater robustness

One of the key differences is the need for precision especially in coordinating the timing of the program to the timing of actions to be performed in the physical world. This is especially important for safety (self-driving vehicles).

Andrey recommended several ways to minimize errors. These include

unit tests

statistical analysis, be as scientific as possible

analyze the math (e.g. roundoff errors)

collect data and visualize it

chart how the logic should behave

study your data sheets,

He next talked about precise timing

real time means done exactly as expected

hard real time is the goal

soft real time means we are close enough to satisfy the task (just good enough)

delay of a sensor reporting results – problems with blocking & time delay

memory mapping – compiler needs to know about it

know the limitations about your processor – e.g. how are threads handled especially on a single core processor

make sure your processor can handle the network

plan for firewalls

plan for encryption.

He then talked about how low level drivers can be tricky – unexpected behavior since it might be trying to optimize specific targets that may or may not be consistent with your assumptions such as how they are initialized,

He noted that historically the most successfully technologies were eventually dominated by a single technology (e.g. packets to create the internet, internal combustion engines, AC current). But IoT has many ways to connect thing (e.g. Zigbee, Wifi,…) and networks such as those in cars are not secure and idiosyncratic. Standardization and protocols will make security better. He proposes creating everything as an avatar in the virtual world. In a world with massively pervasive sensors, anything you buy will also include an avatar in the virtual world.

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The evening was concluded by three lighting talks

Goodsleep talked about monitoring the humidity, temp, light, accelerometer, sound, VOC in the bedroom to assist in getting a good night’s sleep.

Microexpression talked about using a state machine to map text to Morse code

TeamImpacttalked about sensors to save lives and better understand the effects of head trauma. They use accelerometers to measure head impacts which can be compared to historical trends, benchmarked against ones cohort and epidemiologically studied.